The Legacy Project Honorees See the Flipping Book of Honoree Portraits.
Maria Shriver is the mother of four, a Peabody and Emmy-winning journalist and producer, a six-time New York Times best-selling author, and an NBC News Special Anchor covering the shifting roles, emerging power and evolving needs of women in modern life. Maria Shriver was California’s First Lady from 2003 through 2010.
Shriver’s work is driven by the belief that everyone has the ability to be what she calls Architects of Change — a term she coined to describe anyone who uses their ideas, influence and initiative to impact our world.
With a career in journalism spanning more than two decades, Maria Shriver was a network news correspondent and anchor for CBS and NBC. In 2009, she published the “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” In 2010, she published “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s.”
While Maria Shriver served as California’s First Lady, she redefined the office by approaching it not simply as an honorary role, but as a job with real purpose and a platform to make a difference. In addition to playing key political and strategic roles in both of her husband’s campaigns, she created pioneering programs and initiatives that addressed the emerging needs of women, the working poor, military families and families struggling with Alzheimer’s, and the intellectually and developmentally disabled.
Under Shriver’s direction and vision, The California Governor and First Lady’s Conference on Women grew into the world’s premier forum for women. With Shriver at the helm, the conference became a force for change, directly funding more than $5.5 million in charitable programs that served women on the frontlines of humanity.
Shriver’s WE Connect program linked millions of low-income working families with financial resources such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, foreclosure assistance, job placement, résumé assistance, and other important money-saving programs. Shriver’s The Modern House Call for Women, a groundbreaking three-day health and financial services clinic, provided 5,000 free medical, dental and financial services to nearly 2,500 people.
Through Shriver’s WE Invest program and its partnership with Kiva.org, hundreds of women entrepreneurs in the U.S. received microloans totaling more than $1 million. In 2004, Shriver created The Minerva Awards and Minerva Prize to honor and reward remarkable women who have stepped forward and changed the world with their courage, wisdom, and strength.
Shriver has become one of the nation’s leading advocates for families struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. Her father, Sargent Shriver, was diagnosed with the disease in 2003 and passed away from it in 2011 at the age of 95. In 2009, she executive produced The Alzheimer’s Project a groundbreaking four-part documentary series that premiered on HBO and won two Emmy Awards. In addition, one of the films,
“Grandpa, Do you Know Who I Am?” was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for exemplifying “television with a conscience” and was based on Shriver’s best-selling children’s book dealing with Alzheimer’s. Shriver serves on the advisory board of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas.
Shriver is an active member of the International Board of Special Olympics, the organization her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded in 1968. She is also on the advisory board of Best Buddies, and serves as Chair of the Audi Best Buddies Challenge: Hearst Castle, an annual bike ride that raises millions of dollars for programs supporting people with intellectual disabilities.
As First Lady of California, Shriver was instrumental in the hiring of individuals with intellectual disabilities in the capitol and in various state offices. In 2008, she launched an ice cream company called Lovin’ Scoopful in supermarkets around the country with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the Special Olympics and other charities.
Bio from http://mariashriver.com
